Stay Informed with All the Latest Green News, Technologies and Initiatives

Home of Going Green News is the place to stay informed about everything new in the world of Green. Green news keeps you up to date on new inventions and technologies to save on energy costs; avoid using building materials laden with toxins or that have hurt the environment in its production; products that are more natural and safer to use; how to live a sustainable lifestyle, etc.

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Seven Buildings Prepared for – and Fighting Against – Climate Change

Ever hear the old aphorism, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of
cure?" When it comes to natural disasters, this saying rings true: Every
$1 spent mitigating potential hazards leads to an average of $4 in future benefits.

ONE WORLD AT A TIMERemembering Henry David Thoreau on the 150th Anniversaryof his DeathSunday, April 29, 3:00pm, First Parish in Concord
Dramatic readings, period music reception at the Wright Tavern, and a guided walk to the Thoreau family grave site at Sleepy Hollow. Bring favorite Thoreau quotes to share at the grave site.First Parish in Concord, 20 Lexington Road, Concord, MA Free and open to the public. For more info go to the official website. Become a Fan on Facebook and see all the updates there.

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Something to Aspire to - Man Single-Handedly Plants Forest
When Jadav “Molai” Payeng was a teenager he began planting seeds along a barren sandbar near where he was born. It wasn't long before planting an entire forest became his life's work; 1,360 acres of jungle which is now home to a vast array of wildlife including tigers and elephants, birds, deer and rhinos.
Read the full story...

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Teen Who Ran From Chemo 18 Years Ago Now Cancer-Free
The story of Billy best began 18 years ago with a diagnosis of Hodgkin's lymphoma and doctors telling him he had six months to live without the treatment. But Billy wanted alternative treatment and he had to run away to get it. Read his story...

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A Stunning Winner for Best New Private House!Check it out...Wallpaper Design Awards 2011 - A thoroughly contemporary retreat dug into a Swiss mountain. It doesn't get any better than this!

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Green Industry Veterans Launch Energy and Sustainability Consulting Firm"By choosing to reduce the carbon footprint, the tenant and the building owner end up with more money in their pocket. Ultimately, going green pays." By providing green solutions for commercial building owners and to the federal government, they serve to reduce many of the harmful impacts buildings have on the environment and its inhabitants. Read more...

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What, Exactly, Is A Feed-In Tariff?
It's a rate structure that pays consumers to produce electricity, rather than simply charging them to use it.In the renewable-energy policy debate now blossoming on Capitol Hill, a "feed-in tariff" is not under serious consideration. This may prove to be a mistake, because countries such as Germany with feed-in tariffs currently have the greatest installed renewable-energy capacity. Read the whole story in the National Journal.

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The Top Green Cities of India
If you are planning a trip to India, why not visit the top green cities in the country? Due to expansion of infrastructure many of India's cities are removing more and more trees to make way for roads, buildings etc. Fighting the human greed that kills the nature, we have a few cities in the country that preserves its greenery to a great extent. Some of India's cities are keeping their trees;
find out which ones...

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Solar Co-ops: Neighborhood “Solar Support Groups”Reap Big SavingsSolar buying cooperatives have sprung up across the country, as neighbors interested in going solar join together to share in the pre-purchase research and negotiate group discounts. Check out the whole story

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A Future of Free Energy
This is the future of free energy and the end of the energy giants control...the end of oil, coal and nuclear pollution!

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Indoor Food Gardens at O’Hare International Airport
What a fantastic green idea! Increasing their sustainability, this airport now has vegetables growing in indoor vertical gardens supplying 4 of the restaurants in Terminal 3.
Read the full article and see pictures!

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Water Use Outstripping Human Population GrowthWater use has been growing at more than twice the rate of population increase in the last century and developing countries demand on clean water is predicted to increase by 50% between 2007 and 2025, according to Kirsty Jenkinson of the World Resources Institute, a Washington think tank. Read the full article.

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How many people have ever lived on Earth?If you ever thought sustainability is just a left-wing fringy thing that doesn't concern you, then you need to read this... Humanity will be welcoming its 7 billionth member in November 2011, while water use has been growing at more than twice the rate of population increase in the last century!

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The Dirt on CoalNearly half of the electricity in the United States is generated by burning dirty rocks, yet most of us remain blissfully ignorant of the dirty details; 1,140 lbs - total monthly coal consumption for an average U.S. household, resulting in 3,369 pounds of carbon emissions. Here's some pictures that put it into perspective for you. Check it out!

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Asian dies from Pesticide Poisoning
The Dubai Police have warned people against the misuse of insecticides and pesticides following the recording of several untoward cases. "Why this does not make bigger news and provide bigger warnings is beyond me?"
Read the story

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Redesigning Food Labels to Increase Consumer's "Food Literacy"
Rethink the Food Label is a project by the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism’s News21 program and Good Magazine, its objective being to "inspire better food and nutrition literacy with clear, simple, easy-to-understand labels".

Gates Foundation: 'Let's Reinvent the Toilet'
Reinventing the toilet - let's get our s*!t together and DO IT!
The Gates Foundation announces the Reinventing the Toilet Challenge; eight teams from international universities awarded grants of $3 million to leverage advances in science and technology and design a new toilet for use in a single family home, not reliant on sewage infrastructure, costs less than 5 cents/user/day, and can transform raw human waste into something that's useful like fuel, fertilizer and clean water.
Read the full story

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Electrified water lets cleaners throw away the bleach
NEW YORK — It sounds like a late-night infomercial: Kill germs and clean surfaces with nothing more than water and a few volts of electricity! Pay pennies a gallon! Strong enough to kill germs but gentle on your skin!The use of electricity and water to clean and disinfect has been embraced by some food and hospitality businesses looking to save money and go green by swapping out conventional products.Read more...

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Hundreds of new homes get recycled water supply in Australian city
Hundreds of new houses in Adelaide's southern suburbs are being plumbed to make recycled water available. Federal Parliamentary Secretary for Urban Water, Don Farrell, says: "Projects like this will ensure that our gardens don't die and our irrigators can continue to produce food." Read more...

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Immaculate Mini Lawn In Your Bathroom
They say walking on fresh grass increases your blood circulation; Here is a living bath mat that gets the grass to your feet! Such a lovely innovation. Go to the website and register your support for its manufacture.

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A solution to reverse Africa's growing deserts
Groasis, an ingenious passive 'water incubator', collects dew drops, making reforestation in barren lands possible. This simple passive water-harvesting device takes advantage of one attribute that most deserts have — a major temperature differential between night and day. A brilliant invention! Read all about it...

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Even the Military Is Reducing Energy Use
In 2010, the U.S. military used over five billion gallons of fuel in military operations which cost $13.2 billion, a 255 percent increase over 1997 prices. The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) report, Operational Energy Strategy, for the first time, published a strategy to reduce its energy and fuel use.
Read the whole story...

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Climate change is Real
Today, The Conversation launches a two-week series from the nation’s top minds on the science behind climate change and the efforts of “sceptics” to cloud the debate.

The overwhelming scientific evidence tells us that human greenhouse gas emissions are resulting in climate changes that cannot be explained by natural causes.

Climate change is real, we are causing it, and it is happening right now. Read more about these Australian scientists conclusions...

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23-Foot Boat Made from 100% Trash Uses Solar Power
The boat is made from plastic bottles, old advertising banners, and other "trash", and the electric motor is powered by six solar panels when there isn't wind enough to sail. Read more...

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Solar Plane makes maiden international flight
Swiss solar-powered aircraft Solar Impulse has flown roughly 480 kilometres from western Switzerland to Brussels airport, flying over France and Luxembourg at 3,600 metres and taking about 13 hours to complete its maiden flight.
Read more at ABC News.

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Many Eco-friendly bulbs contain toxic chemicals
Though we are told they are the non-green choice, the simple incandescent light bulb is still the cleanest, most non-toxic form of consumer lighting available.
Learn more

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World In A Shell is designed to carry knowledge around the world and ‘pollinate’ other cultures. The project launched its tour in March of 2010 at the MuseumPark in Rotterdam, and it will travel for the next 5 years to remote spots in culturally significant places to capture and store pictures, drawings, recordings, stories, self-representations, and art works about local people, their culture, and their living conditions. As the walk-in-sculpture travels around the globe, it takes with it all this information and passes it on to the next group of people.

Mt. Shasta, a small northern California town of 3,500 residents nestled in the foothills of magnificent Mount Shasta, is taking on corporate power through an unusual process - democracy. Their proposed ordinance would refuse to recognize corporate personhood, explicitly place the rights of community and local government above the economic interests of multinational corporations, and recognize the rights of nature to exist, flourish, and evolve. Read more...

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Sustainable Farming in the City?

You could call FARM:shop a legal grow-op: they are growing vegetables inside an abandoned house instead of dope. And some tilapia fish, not to mention basil and chickens on the roof. Read more...

Spain's Solar Power Towers

Spain is is leading the way in reducing carbon emissions and is one of the most advanced countries in the development of solar energy, as it is one of the European countries with more hours of sunshine. The cost of reducing carbon emissions will depend partly on the price of new energy technologies such as this concentrating solar plant in Spain. The country is establishing itself and its solar companies as world leaders in the renewable energy field with plans to build more concentrating solar power plants like the one pictured. Their researchers are continuing to explore new ways to improve their solar power systems, while the number of installed photovoltaic systems grows.

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Inner City is One Big Veggie Patch!
The Daily Telegraph, January 31, 2011 12:00AM

IT'S the ultimate grassroots movement that's turning Sydney's concrete jungle into a vegetable patch.
Flowerbeds will be converted to veggie gardens under a new scheme announced by the City of Sydney today with over 300,000 vegetable plants such as tomatoes, sunflowers, and silver beet to be planted in several locations around Australia's most populated city.
Read more...

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Waste Plant Doubles as a Ski Slope with Lasers

Danish architecture firm Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) has come up with a new award winning design for a waste-to-energy plant in Copenhagen - it doubles as a ski slope and also raises awareness of energy consumption with the use of lasers.
Denmark is one of the world’s leaders when it comes to turning garbage into clean, alternative fuel with over 30 waste-to-energy plants. BIG is now seeking to make Denmark’s trash even more functional by bringing recreation and raising public awareness about energy consumption to this new waste facility.
Read more...

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The Year of the Flood

On the eve of her 70th birthday, Canadian writer Margaret Atwood set out on an international tour criss-crossing the British Isles and North America to celebrate the publication of her new dystopian novel, The Year of the Flood. Rather than mount a traditional tour to promote a book’s publication, Atwood conceived and executed something far more ambitious and revelatory —a theatrical version of her novel. Along the way she reinvented what a book tour could (and maybe should) be. But Atwood wasn't selling books as much as advocating an idea: how humanity must respond to the consequences of an environmentally compromised planet before her work of speculative fiction transforms into prophecy.

I actually live in Toowoomba and this is a story about how that devastating Inland Tsunami happened. I have put it up here because I believe it is all too true and I hope that others will recognize if this is happening in their communities and hopefully do something to avert such disasters.

Humans think they can conquer nature and prevail over the environment, but I am convinced that that attitude will all too often end the way this day did - January 10, 2011, Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia.

This innovative Australian brand has some of the greenest makeup on the market. The only thing missing was the brushes with which to apply it — until now. Take a look...

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THE BIOME: Mercedes' car of the future...

Showcased at this year's Los Angeles Design Challenge was the Mercedes-Benz perfect car of the future. The Mercedes-Benz BIOME is grown from seed sown in a nursery! Out on the road the car emits pure oxygen, and at the end of its life it can be composted or recycled as building material. Now that's my sort of car. See the pictures

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South Africa unveils plans for 'world's biggest' solar power plant.

David Smith in Johannesburg; guardian.co.uk, Monday 25 October 2010 17.01 BST
South Africa is to unveil plans this week for what it claims will be the world's biggest solar power plant. Giant mirrors and solar panels would be spread across the Northern Cape province, with the aim by the end of its first decade to achieve an annual output of five gigawatts (GW) of electricity - currently one-tenth of South Africa's energy needs.
Energy is already a high priority in South Africa and this is a radical step in a coal-dependent country where one in six people still lack electricity.

Bill Clinton Welcomes World Leaders To Global Initiative Summit

(RTTNews 09/21/2010) - Former US President Bill Clinton on Tuesday welcomed world leaders from a variety of backgrounds to his annual Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) forum in New York City.
The sixth CGI summit is taking place on the sidelines of a United Nations General Assembly meeting on poverty, hunger and disease.
He urged world leaders to make financial commitments that are "specific, measurable and new," particularly on the issue of climate change, which he said will cause the rate of economic disasters in the developing world to accelerate.Read the whole article here.

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Statistician Nic Marks asks why we measure a nation's success by its productivity...